Monday, June 27, 2011

Weekend press and more info on Hunstman

The New York Post ran a piece on Romney on Saturday, in which it was shown how much he flipflops...I guess that is how he got to be a red governor in a blue state.
On Sunday, the New York Times did a feature on Huntsman, and yet again, an underlying theme there was, who is this guy? Even his campaign staff do not seem to know; many of them have just met him for the first time.
Matt Bai hangs out with him for a few days and gives us a view of the happenings, which are very illuminating. What I make of it is that Huntsman is a rather capable bloke in many fields, and I have a respect for him as he learned the Chinese language and culture. Or I ought to be more specific and say he learned Mandarin and the Chinese culture. And by way of digression, I might just add that this has become a very useful language to learn if you want a job...but getting back to our speaker of Mandarin, who is looking for a job on Pennsylvania Avenue, I think that despite this qualification, he will best serve the US as a diplomat, political analyst, governor of his native state, or, as the article suggest he might be looking at himself, in the post of VP. I see nothing to really dislike in him, and those voters whom he met found him an affable fellow; however, they did not find answers to specific questions on policies, and this did not sit too well with the likes of Travis Blais, the GOP chairman in Windham, New Hampshire. "His attitude seems to be, 'Well, I'm just up here introducing myself to people, and I'll let you know what my positions are later," Blais told the NYT; Blais summed it up with: " Frankly, people noticed...people said, 'Nice guy, very smart, but I have no idea what he thinks.' "
So there. Not quite presidential, but not a bad fish. Nate Silver, a politics blogger for the NYT, opined that Huntsman has not more than a remote chance of scoring the nomination. Even with the vast wealth of his father, who by the way invented the clamshell takeaway containter, he will most likely not be able to convince people to give him the #1 job in America, even if he does speak Mandarin.